From The FDR Collection

Not Harmer's backstamp, but Jacques Minkus, who bought a large portion of FDR's collection to sell in Gimbel's stamp departments.

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I have one stamped by Harmer as being part of FDR's collection. Its an illustrated cover featuring the commissioning of the USS North Carolina. FDR traveled all over the world on this ship. The cover was address and sent to FDR by the Navy.

Jack Kelley

Oh, I forgot to mention that I am a big FDR fan. As such, I have a Hyde Park, NY cover dated 3/4/3 - the date of his first Inaugural. Also, a Washington DC cover dated 4/12/45 - the date of his death. I plan to put it up on ebay as soon as I can find a 4/12/45 Warm Springs. Ga cover - the date and place of his death.

Jack Kelley

this is my item from Roosevelt

how much of this material is out there?

I think more than the demand...
Don

Can I know some information on my item?
Thanks
Federico

FDR had 1.2 million stamp items. Sold at Harmers for $228,000 and marked by request. J. Minkus also labeled and sold FDR items. More items are in the FDR Presidential LIbrary & Museum.

As a collector FDR called his items "scrap."

The items sold for just under 2¢ each (.019)

Fedit, your item is a piece of a pre-stamped envelope with multiple impressions. These are not rare.

As has been said, FDR collection items are quite common though some dealers make a big deal of them and try to sell them for high prices. The thing is that it was widely known that Roosevelt was a stamp collector and the result was that most every stamp collector and dealer in the county would send covers they created as well as stamps to the White House. The result is that Roosevelt did not likely see more than one in ten thousand things that were flooding into the mail room addressed to him. He did have his personal collection which did include some rare things since he had high level postal officials giving him rarities, but the vast majority of what was sold to the public as being from his collection is just the ordinary junk collectors and dealers were sending in every day and that never came anywhere near Roosevelt. This practice of giving Presidents "gifts" was going on long before Roosevelt and continues to today with all kinds of "stuff" being sent to the President - mostly for the purpose of marketing by saying that "you too can now buy what the President has".

As an example Kimo what is the Kane cover worth?

Many dealers don't pay much attention to the address. Thus FDR covers like this one can often be found in dollar boxes. This cover is not auction-marked on the back, so may have been from a bulk lot. Interesting, but not valuable.

Hi Sdtom. The 1938 U.S.S. Kane decommissioning cover shown by the original posting above might go for as much as $2 to $3 if you could find the right naval cover collector. These are quite common and the address to the President does not really add anything to it. Now if it were a cover FROM the President and one that he actually hand addressed and sent himself and was not addressed and sent by someone on his secretarial staff then there would have the added value of being associated with him. His authenticated autograph (there are countless forgeries out there) can go for as much as $200 to $300 and even higher if it is on something historically significant.

Thanks for the information